This is an account of the empowerment of
poor artisanal fishermen in West Africa, in the country of Sierra Leone
which I visited several times from 1988 to 1991. The efforts of the UN
and bilateral donors were remarkably successful, but were later brought
to nothing by the devastation of the civil war which spilled over from
neighbouring Liberia during the dreadful period of mindless conflict and
mass cruelty towards innocent villagers.

Sierra Leone was founded as a home for freed
slaves. I have stood under the 220 year-old cotton tree in Freetown
where the forefathers of the current nation gathered in 1792 to receive
their liberty and take possession of the territory ascribed to them. (It
was a reward for fighting with British troops in the American war of
independence). The country is rich in natural resources, - diamonds,
bauxite, forests, fertile soil, abundant fresh water, and extensive
resources of marine fish. In Freetown it has a deep water port that
could have been developed along the lines of Singapore. But corruption,
mismanagement, greed, and the “diamond curse” have combined to reduce
that potentially wealthy country to one of Africa’s basket cases. It is
so sad, when one meets the truly wonderful young people of that
struggling nation.

Colonialism can hardly be blamed for the
present evils. British rule provided good education, law and order, and
political stability. Diamond smuggling was largely kept in check. But
once the colonial administration departed, things went downhill fairly
rapidly. Siake Stevens, one of the better national leaders who quickly
became dictatorial, was misguided and cheated by ruthless merchants. I
was taken to the Fishery Offices in Freetown, for many years the
barracks for a contingent of the British navy. One got the impression
that after the last sailor or marine marched out, all maintenance and
repair ceased. Cobwebs hung from the windows and rafters. Files lay in
pathetic piles on the floor with no apparent attempt to keep them in
manageable order. While we gazed on the depressing scene, one of the
senior officers berated the aid programmes for not giving all the
assistance in hard cash directly into their hands since “we are much
better able to handle it than foreigners”. Inside the Ministry of
Natural resources, (a building constructed by Chinese aid), it was
heart-rending to have hungry civil servants beg for a few Leones to help
feed their families.

All my life I have been strongly in favour
of self-government for the nations of the world, but without a solid
foundation of integrity and competence, independence can result in rule
by the corrupt, the ruthless, and the greedily ambitious, as has
happened sadly in a number of African States and eastern countries like
Myanmar. But in each individual case there have been foreign powers
willing to pander to corruption and to take advantage of the
administrative weaknesses.

However, there was a bright if short period
of progress and prosperity for the coastal fishing communities of Sierra
Leone which benefited from some well thought-out and well-administered
projects financed mainly by Germany and donors to the UN and FAO. The
basic elements of a vibrant small-scale fishery were there. Fish were
abundant in coastal waters. Local fishermen were skilled and
industrious. But nothing was happening because they lacked fuel and
fishing gear. These were available, but only if paid for in foreign
currency. The local notes, Leones, were largely worthless. What the GTZ
German aid officers did was to offer the fishermen motors, fuel and
nets, - not for free, - but for payment in Leones. The response was
overwhelming and the project had to ration the items to legitimate
fishers rather than allow a few applicants to obtain excessive amounts
of the gear and supplies. Sack-fulls of Leone notes appeared out of mud
huts and rural villages that on the surface were quite impoverished. In
a short time whole coastal area of Tombo south of Freetown, was replete
with nets and motorized boats, and fish catches soared.

In the absence of ice, the common method of
preservation was smoke-drying. This required a lot of fuel. So an
unfortunate environmental result of the fishery was that the hill behind
Tombo was denuded of trees, and a replacement planting programme had to
be initiated. But there were many beneficial results. The GTZ project
persuaded the fisher leaders to invest in a local school and medical
clinic. This they eventually did. From the profits of their operations,
books and medicines were purchased and a qualified teacher and nurse
employed. The German donors provided the buildings.

Most African countries suffer from migration
of poor people from the countryside to the towns or cities. It is a
natural result of mechanization and land-grabbing by the wealthier
citizens. The migrants sometimes get work in the urban areas, but often
end up as squatters and beggars. But in Sierra Leone, a reverse
migration occurred as people in Freetown heard of the prosperity of the
fishing village of Tombo, and hundreds of them moved there to
participate in the industry. The village population swelled in
consequence and its new leaders, the chief fishers, had to organize
sanitation, water supplies, and housing regulations to cope with the
rapid growth. (It should be understood that outside of the capital in
many poor African states, central government has little influence and
provides next to no services). Time and again in my own work, we have
tried to give rural villages some control over their own future and
welfare. Governments are now at least giving lip service to the idea by
initiating programmes of devolved administration.

A similar successful project was mounted on
the coast farther south, at Shenge. These villages and their small
near-shore islands were once slave trading bases during the period of
that wicked and callous trade in innocent human beings. I have seen the
remains of iron posts and rings there where the unfortunate victims were
chained prior to them being shipped to America in appalling conditions.
The Shenge project was also based primarily on fishing, but had a more
integrated approach to local development. It also took longer to
establish as the FAO staff wisely deemed it better for all interventions
to be agreed to and fully supported by the villagers, before they were
enacted. This in development jargon is known as ‘participation’, and it
is vital for long term sustainability. In

1988 I was asked by the FAO to review sites
of past projects in Africa, Asia and south-East Asia, and to assess the
degree of success or failure, and to identify they key factors in
success. Accompanying me on that mission was Jean Luis Gaudet, a fine
French-Canadian with a lifetime’s experience in mainly franco-phone
countries. What we discovered was that there was no single factor that
guaranteed success, but usually a number of factors, that may have had
quite a different mix in different lands or continents. However, two
elements that were evident in each case of success, however limited,
were meaningful participation by the people, and an integrated approach
to economic and social development. These were evident in the way Shenge
progressed.

Unlike Tombo which developed rapidly due to
a concentration on, and a massive increase, in fish production, Shenge
interventions were spread out to involve local processing and ancillary
industries, and innovations to improve the quality of life. What many of
the villagers, young and old, said to me, was, “We like this project
very much because every person in the community benefits”. Shenge
fish drying avoided the toll on local forest timber because the project
introduced kilns that conserved fuel. There was more emphasis on quality
of dried or smoked fish and that raised the price, if not the amount of
the product. Benefits were spread to the women-folk who started to open
shops, restaurants, overnight guest houses, dress-making and hair
dressing salons.

So the fishing villages of the Sierra Leone
coast showed that beneficial development was possible, and that it could
be village-based, and small scale.

Previous development initiatives had focused
on a ‘single fix’ or ‘technical fix’ solution, like an ice plant, or
boat yard, or cold store. These usually had limited impact. This was
rather I think, the way my own government treated the Hebrides and West
of Scotland, with its ill-thought-out projects to improve the regional
economy by investing in things like a fish meal plant, a pulp mill, or a
massive quarry for building materials. Local people were barely
consulted on the viability of most of these ventures, and were not
surprised they turned out to be social, economic, and environmental
disasters.

Around the same time I was asked by the
Director of Fisheries, Freetown, and UNIDO Vienna, to try to resurrect
the offshore fishery in a way that would benefit the country and the
people. I drafted proposals for a deep sea fishery management body,
along the lines of the company that ran the international airport, -
sharing the revenues with the government and with the traditional
fishery sector, investing some money in facilities at Freetown port, and
some in equipment for the artisanal fishermen. My ideas were accepted by
the Director of Fisheries and the Minister of Natural Resources, and
forwarded to UNIDO, the United Nations Industrial Development
Organisation in Vienna, who were to locate funding and some technical
assistance. But unknown to us, other less altruistic persons were
showing an interest.

A copy of the document was passed on
unofficially to an English consulting firm which purloined the material
and put it in a proposal under their name. They then came to a private
agreement with the Minister of Industry, to share the profits between
himself and the company if he would approve of the venture. One of
England’s senior fish inspectors was involved, as was a British
helicopter firm. A management company was set up and started to operate,
and to rake in money from fees for access to the offshore fishery. The
Director of Fisheries was angry at the ‘theft’ of a project that could
have helped the local fishermen, and enabled the country to upgrade
fishery facilities in Freetown. The local fishers were furious at what
they saw as the ‘sell-out’ of the offshore fish stocks to foreigners who
were going to contribute nothing to the country apart from under the
table payments to a corrupt Minister. There were strong public protests
over the type of project and the undemocratic way it was approved.
Eventually the consulting firm was kicked out of the country after 3
years operation, to the delight of the national fishery sector. One of
the company consultants told me that in the last few months he could not
step out of his hotel at night for fear of his life.

But the exploitation of Sierra Leone’s
fishery was nothing compared to the looting of its diamonds, or to the
horrific war that enveloped that lovely land and brutalized its people,
and destroyed what was showing so much promise.

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